Me and My MFA

I earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College in 2005. It was three years of non-stop workshops in screenplay, novel, and short fiction as well as literature classes, teaching pedagogy, and a smattering of other stuff. I don’t talk about it much, really. I’ve been taught, through gradual experience, that nobody really wants to hear about it.

When you get an MFA, you find yourself situated with a foot in two very different, very adversarial worlds. On the one hand, you are a “writer” among many other people who are also writers and many of whom chose not to spend the money and time to get an MFA. I’ve found, generally to my surprise, that when I mention that I have an MFA among writers, the response (more often than not) is prickly defensiveness. They, more often than not, look at me like this:

I promise you that I don’t. Really.

Now, maybe this reaction is because of all the MFA-holders who are douchebags (more on that later), but generally I think the fact that I have an MFA and they do not makes them doubt themselves somehow and they resent me for being the impetus for their self-doubt. When you’re trying to become a writer, there is an almost constant worry that you’re doing it wrong, somehow. You worry if you’re ever going to make it and if your plan is just so much pie-in-the-sky dreaming and then along comes me, with my fancy-shmancy MFA, and oh I must think I’m so special…etc., etc.

Then, on the other side of your post-MFA life, you’ve got the academic world. An MFA is a terminal degree, technically equivalent to a PhD in other fields, and entitles you (should you so choose) to dive into the world of higher education. The thing is, though, that nobody in the academic world really thinks your MFA is equivalent to a PhD because, let’s be honest here, you just made shit up for your dissertation and you basically earned a degree for talented lying and now you think, for some reason, you’re entitled to have opinions about things happening at an actual college with real academics. I’m one of the only professors my students have who does not have the honorific “Doctor” in front of my name. I keep picturing Sheldon Cooper sneering at me over my shoulder at faculty meetings sometimes. I think, probably, in this instance it is me having a degree of self-doubt about my worthiness to be in higher ed – probably very few of my colleagues actually look down on me – but the feeling of Impostor Syndrome is often very strong.

So, I don’t bring up my MFA if I can help it. I let my work and ideas speak for themselves, since the degree itself seems more of a divisive thing than otherwise. All that said, I think my MFA was a valuable experience for me and its capacity to get me into teaching higher ed has been an invaluable benefit for my life and career. I did learn to be a better writer in my program. Do you need an MFA to become a better writer? Of course not! You can take the same number of workshops and classes in your free time from any number of programs and probably for less money. My MFA didn’t make me any more publishable and didn’t give me an inside-scoop on the publishing world by any means – I came out of my program a better writer, but just as unprepared for the publishing end of writing as anybody else. And, furthermore, everybody’s MFA experience likely varies a wide bit just based upon course selection, the school you attend, and even the individuals who happen to be in workshop with you. As with so much else in life, Your Mileage May Vary.

Which brings me to this op-ed piece in The Stranger by Ryan Boudinot which discusses the things he, as an ex-MFA teacher, believes about writers and MFA programs. This article has caused a bit of a stir in the writing community, with people reacting very poorly to Boudinot’s tone and argument. In particular, Chuck Wendig tears the guy a new one on his blog. I, personally, did not react quite so negatively. I mean, I don’t fully agree with a bunch of things he says, but the spirit of much of what he says I feel is accurate and, furthermore, very much reflective of what goes on inside MFA programs. Now, is he being an arrogant, elitist jerk about this stuff? Well, yeah. But, then again, maybe it doesn’t bother me that much because, having been through an MFA program, I got kinda used to listening to arrogant elitist jerks (both teachers and fellow students) spout off and I got good at finding the kernel of truth behind all the BS. I mean, you have to understand that, as a science fiction writer in a MFA program, I was basically considered to be some kind of dumb, half-wit cousin to “actual writers.” I was very commonly in an atmosphere of disdain and dismissal when I discussed what work inspired me and what I liked to read. A number of workshops forbade anything they termed “genre literature,” and when I offered up a page of William Gibson’s Neuromancer as good writing, a bunch of people refused to read it on the grounds that “they didn’t read that kind of thing.”

It was all crap, I know, but I learned how to sift useful information out of that crap. That, in and of itself, was an education worth the price of admission, since so much of writing is listening to nonsense about your writing with tiny kernels of useful truth. You gotta learn how to find it.

Accordingly, here are the kernels of truth that ought to be taken out of Boudinot’s piece, and what I instinctively took his points to mean:

Assertion #1: “Writers are Born With Talent”
Yeah, I agree that writers aren’t some kind of elite genetic sub-class. That said, people clearly have varying levels of talent for doing it, and the most talented people who work the hardest have the best chance of succeeding. I can see how Boudinot, after years of wading through reams of indifferent prose, might grow embittered towards those students who weren’t very good at writing. That said, I feel as though this assertion is a non-entity, a non-statement. Yeah, we all have certain talents. We can hone what talent we have and get better, yeah, but some of us will never be prima ballerinas, try as we might. I mean, right? Is someone going to kick down my door and tell me I could be greatest kung fu master who ever lived if only I wanted it enough? I kinda doubt it. Desire is arguably more important, yeah, but to say talent is irrelevant seems odd to me.

Assertion #2: “You Need To Take Writing Seriously as a Kid to Make It”
Okay, so first off this is provably false, yes. Of course you can still make it, and at any age. The kernel of truth in this assertion, though, is this statement:

Being a writer means developing a lifelong intimacy with language.

This happens in about a million different ways, and everybody I know who is a writer has this love of language (whether consciously or otherwise) that they have developed throughout their lives. This doesn’t really mean “taking writing seriously as a teenager,” but it does mean having that connection with language since a young age. If you never read a book in your life and hated writing things, the odds that at 40 you can somehow make it as a novelist seem low. Not impossible, mind you, but low. Furthermore, for Boudinot, many of his students weren’t teenagers all that long ago. If you’re 22 and in a MFA program and you hadn’t already developed some kind of serious interest in language, you are probably wasting your time and everybody else’s in that program (and one wonders how you got in).

Assertion #3: “If You Complain About Not Having Time to Write, Drop Out”

This is one spot where I stringently disagree with Chuck Wendig. I’m sorry, if you sign up to get a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, you are well past the point where complaining about having time to write is a sensible objection. You (and the rest of us) are shelling out significant money and time to do this, and if you can’t figure out how to actually write in your writing program, what the hell are you doing there? Students like this in my classes used to piss me off. You were told we were going to workshop your story on the 10th so we needed it by the 8th and NO you can’t have an extension because my story is up next, you lazy dipshit. This isn’t high school, kid. Suck it up.

Assertion #4: “You Must Be a Serious Reader”

Now, on the one hand, Boudinot’s definition of what makes a “serious reader” is elitist BS of the kind which I was regularly exposed to while attending my MFA program. That said, he is right – you need to read and you need to challenge yourself while you read if you expect to do good work. Reading nothing but Lois L’Amour Westerns is not a roadmap to the bestsellers list, as fun as they are. Writers need to read widely and deeply to succeed, and everybody says this. They just aren’t being jerks about it, like this guy is.

Assertion #5: “Nobody Cares If You Suffered If the Writing is Bad”

Okay, is this poorly put? Hell yes. Is it offensive and dismissive of people’s experiences? Absolutely! Would I have put it this way? No, I would not. Is he right?
Absolutely.
I spend 3 years in my MFA reading a LOT of navel-gazing, pointless, error-laden prose about a person’s personal baggage and it sucked. A lot. This guy is picking the meanest way possible to say something (sadly) very true: nobody cares how good the story is if you are bad at telling it. Let’s not beat around the bush, shall we? Sometimes you are not the equal of the story you wish to tell. That’s a fact. What you need to do, though, is get better so that you will become the person who can tell that story. If you just want to get the story out on paper, then fine – more power to you – but there’s more to it than that in order to be a storyteller.

Assertion #6: “You Don’t Need My Help To Get Published”

This comment reflects a certain attitude towards the publishing world at the moment – that the Old Guard, the New York elite are not as essential as they were. Do I agree with him? Well, not exactly (I went traditional, after all), but he’s welcome to his bias. Honestly, much of the publishing advice I received from professors during my MFA program was a lot less clear than that, so I can’t complain.

Assertion #7: “It’s Not Important That People Think You’re Smart”

Here he is 100% correct without reservation. Furthermore, I can say that there were a lot of people in my MFA program trying very hard to seem smart (or edgy or sensitive or whatever) and it always came off as them trying too hard. A couple years of reading stuff like that, and no doubt you’d be singing the same tune as this fellow.

Assertion #8: “It’s Important to Woodshed”

Again, this is some of the best advice in the piece. The MFA (or any “writing instruction”) does not spit you out a ready-made hit machine. Writing, more often than not, requires time and privacy and perseverance. Showcasing your crappy first drafts to the universe doesn’t help anybody, least of all you. You can’t expect good commentary to come from unfinished work. It isn’t until you’ve got the whole something sitting in front of somebody that problems become clear and the good parts really shine. Woodshedding doesn’t mean suffering for your art, it means focusing on making the art rather than telling people you’re making it. Craft before coffee shop, folks.

But, you know, you don’t need to listen to me. I’m just one guy talking about his experiences, here.